Some of the products and ingredients are essential to health care in the U.S. such as pacemakers, artificial joints, defibrillators, dental fillings, birth-control pills and vaccines.

In addition, dozens of drugs and medical devices are also among products targeted for the tariff. Some of them are in short supply, and dangerously so. They are epinephrine, which treats allergic reactions, and others like insulin, whose price rising has led to public outrage.

This proposed tariff has unsettled the medical device and supply industries, since a growing number of products and their components are manufactured in China.

The manufacturing of medical equipment has shifted from throwaway surgical gloves to more complicated products like MRI scanners.

An International Trade Commission in January, the Times reported, said the fastest growth in China’s medical device industry has been in sales of orthopedic devices, plates, and screws, made mostly of titanium and used for surgery and sports medicine.

One analyst, the Times continued, estimated that 12 percent of medical devices imported to the US come from China, which amounts to $3 billion a year.

A report this week by RBC Capital Markets, the article mentioned, estimated that if the tariffs took effect, this could cost the medical device industry up to $1.5 billion each year. Some of these higher costs would result in higher prices for those devices, and would affect baby boomers, who are the biggest recipients of hip and knee replacements.

This no doubt would be a boon to the medical travel industry, from the US to countries not imposing tariffs on Chinese products, or not.

Greg Crist, spokesperson for AdvaMed, the device members trade group, said its members were “disappointed because this action threatens to affect the health and well-being of American patients and those around the world, the Times article added.

While it is unclear if the tariffs would be enacted, companies have until May to lobby the administration for changes. But the man-child ratcheted up the pressure by threatening to levy tariffs on an additional $100 billion in imports.

However, analysts said that it was unclear if the tariffs would have an effect on the drug industry, even though China is a leading exporter of raw pharmaceutical ingredients, according to the article.

“We don’t see much impact,” said Umer Raffat, a pharmaceutical industry analyst for Evercore ISI on Tuesday to investors.

This is so because many generic drugs that contain Chinese ingredients are manufactured in places like India and would not be subject to the tariffs.

Yet, one trade group has sounded the alarm, the article indicated. They said that the tariffs could exacerbate the issue of health care costs as the administration is pledging to lower drug prices.

Lastly, there are two drugs on the list of 1,300 Chines exports: epinephrine and lidocaine, which are in short supply in their injectable form.

“Things are so bad right now with the injectables, we don’t need anything else to pile on, to possibly make things worse,” said Erin R. Fox, a drug-shortage expert at the University of Utah.

She also said that the tariffs could exacerbate the shortfalls of generic injectable drugs, the decades-old products that are the mainstay of hospitals and have long been in short supply due to manufacturing problems and disruptions in supply.

For some widely used products, it is unclear, according to the article, how American consumers would be affected. Insulin is one example; however, all three companies that sell insulin in the US, Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk said they did not import insulin from China.

Whatever happens with the tariffs, the effect they would have on health care here and around the world is uncertain. However, it would be prudent for those in the health care industry, the medical travel industry, and the workers’ comp industry to be aware and act accordingly to provide their patients with the drugs and devices they need.

Americans commemorated the assassination of Martin Luther King fifty years ago on Wednesday. Two years earlier, Dr. King, in March 1966, said the following during a press conference in Chicago at the second convention of the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR):

“…Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhuman because it often results in physical death.”

The part of the quote up to the word ‘inhuman’ begins the Introduction of a new book I just began reading called, Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health by Howard Waitzkin and the Working Group on Health Beyond Capitalism, published by Monthly Review Press, the publishing arm of the Monthly Review, an Independent Socialist magazine.

Those of you who know me, and those of you who have read many of my previous posts, know that my educational background is in the Social Sciences, as my B.A, is in Political Science and History, with Sociology and African-American Studies thrown in, along with some Humanities coursework. My M.A. is in History, with emphasis on American Social History, especially post-Civil War until the mid to late 20th century. In addition, I also have a Master’s degree in Health Administration (MHA).

But what you may not know is that my leanings have been to the far left, and I am still proudly and defiantly so, even if I have tempered my views with age and new insights. I think that is called wisdom.

So, as I set out to read this book, much of the material presented in it will not be new to me, but will be perhaps new to many of you, especially those of you who got their education in business schools, and were fed bourgeois nonsense about marketing, branding, and other capitalist terms that are more apropos for selling automobiles and appliances and such, but not for health care, as this book will prove.

In this book, there will be terms that many of you will either find annoying, depending on your own personal political leanings, or that you are unfamiliar with. Words such as alienation of labor, commodification, imperialism, neoliberalism, and proletarianization may make some of you see red. So be it. Change will not occur until many of you are shaken out of your lethargy and develop your class consciousness.

“Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.” Karl Marx

While the publisher of the book is an independent socialist foundation, it is no means a Marxist or Communist organization. And from my perusal of the names of the contributors to the chapters of the book, I have found that they are all health care professionals or academics, as well as activists.

Two of the contributors of one chapter, David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler, are familiar to many in the health care industry, as they have co-authored many peer reviewed articles in health care journals that I have cited in my previous blog posts.

Be warned. This book may piss you off. Too bad. The future of health care is at stake, as is the health of every man, woman, and child in the U.S. and around the world.

This will probably be true no matter what part of the health care industry you work in. Physicians, insurance company personnel, pharmaceutical company executives, Wall Street investors and money managers, service providers, vendors, consultants and many others will discover inconvenient truths about the businesses that provide their livelihood. As stakeholders in the status quo, you will be resistant to the prescriptions the writers offer for correcting the mistakes of the past, and the recommendations they suggest for the future of health care.

This book will not only be relevant to the health care industry, but also to the workers’ compensation and medical travel industries, as each is a subset of health care.

And if you do get upset or angry at me for what I have to say about health care, then you are part of the problem as to why health care in the U.S. is broken. Those of you around the world will also learn that your own countries are moving in a direction that sooner or later will result in your health care system mirroring our own, as the authors will point out.

This is a book that will shake you to your core. So, sit back, relax, and keep an open mind. It’s about to be blown.

The book is divided into five parts, with each part containing at most five chapters, as in Part Five, or two chapters, as in Part Two. Parts Three and Four, each contain four chapters. Part One deals with Social Class and Medical Work, and focuses on doctors as workers, the deprofessionalization and emerging social class position of health professionals, the degradation of medical labor and the meaning of quality in health care, and finally, the political economy of health reform.

Throughout the book, they ask questions relating to the topics covered in each chapter, and in Part One, the following questions are asked:

How have the social-class positions of health workers, both professional and non-professional, changed along with changes in the capitalist global economy?

How has the process of health work transformed as control over the means of production and conditions of the workplace has shifted from professionals to corporations?

These questions are relevant since medicine has become more corporatized, privatized, and financialized. The author of the second chapter, Matt Anderson, analyzes the “sorry state of U.S. primary care” and critically examines such recently misleading innovations such as the “patient-centered medical home”, “pay for performance”, the electronic medical record, quantified metrics to measure quality including patient satisfaction (“we strive for five”), and conflicts of interest as professional associations and medical schools receive increasing financial support from for-profit corporations.

Part One is concludes with Himmelstein and Woolhandler responding to a series of questions put to them by Howard Waitzkin about the changing nature of medical work and how that relates to the struggle for a non-capitalist model of a national health program. Himmelstein and Woolhandler comment on the commodification of health care, the transformation that has occurred during the current stage of capitalism, the changing class position of health professionals, and the impact of computerization and electronic medical records.

Part Two focuses on the medical-industrial complex in the age of financialization. Previous posts of mine this year and last, reference the medical-industrial complex, so my readers will be familiar with its usage here. In this section, the authors tackle the following questions:

What are the characteristics of the current “medical industrial complex,” and how have these changed under financialization and deepening monopolization?

Two corollary questions are raised as follows:

Are such traditional categories as the private insurance industry and pharmaceutical industry separable from the financial sector?

How do the current operations of those industries reflect increasing financialization and investment practices?

Once again, Matt Anderson authors the first chapter in Part Two, this time with Robb Burlage, a political economist and activist. Anderson and Burlage analyze the growing similarities and overlaps between the for-profit and so-called not-for-profit sectors in health care, considering especially the conversion of previously not-for-profit corporations such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield to for-profit.

The second chapter in Part Two is authored by Joel Lexchin, an emergency care physician and health policy researcher in Canada and analyzes monopoly capital and the pharmaceutical industry from an international perspective.

Part Three looks at the relationships between neoliberalism, health care and health. Before I go any further, let me provide the reader with a definition of neoliberalism in case the authors assume that those who read this book understand what it is.

These neoliberal policies have been associated in the U.S. with the Republican Party and the Conservative movement since the election of Ronald Reagan. In the UK, the rise of Thatcherism ended the long dominance of the Labor Party’s left-wing until Tony Blair’s New Labor took over. Bill Clinton’s election in the U.S. in 1992, diminished some of these policies, and implemented others such as welfare reform, a goal Republicans had wanted to achieve for decades.

Returning to Part Three, the questions asked here are:

What is the impact of neoliberalism on health reforms, in the United States and in other countries?

What are the ideological assumptions of health reform proposals and how are they transmitted?

What are the effects of economic austerity policies on health reform and what are the eventual impacts on health outcomes?

In the next chapter, Howard Waitzkin and Ida Hellander, a leading health policy researcher and activist, trace the history of the Affordable Care Act initially developed by economists in the military during the Vietnam War. International financial institutions, the authors say, especially the World Bank, promoted a boilerplate for neoliberal health care reforms, which focused mainly on privatization of services previously based in the public sector and on shifting trust funds to private for-profit insurance companies.

Colombia’s health reform of 1994, Hillary Clinton’s in that year as well, Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachusetts in 2006, which led to the ACA, are examples cited by the authors. The chapter also clarifies the ideological underpinnings of the neoliberal model and shows that the model has failed to improve access and control costs, according to the authors.

Economic austerity is closely linked to neoliberalism and have led to drastic cutbacks in health services and public health infrastructure in many countries. As I have recently written in my post, Three Strategies for Improving Social Determinants of Health, economic austerity policies have also affected health outcomes through increased unemployment, food insecurity, unreliable water supplies (Flint, MI), and reduced educational opportunities. Recent teacher protests in West Virginia, Oklahoma and other states are examples of this.

In the second chapter in Part Three, Adam Gaffney and Carles Muntaner, focus on social epidemiology, especially the impacts of economic policies on health and mental health outcomes. They also document the devastating effects of austerity in Europe, focusing on Greece, Spain and England. The authors analyze four dimensions of austerity:

This trend would seem to have a negative effect on medical travel from Europe and to Europe, as Europe’s health care systems, long touted as a less expensive alternative to medical care in the U.S., begins to suffer.

Part Four examines the connections between health and imperialism historically and as part of the current crises. The question in this part is:

What are the connections among health care, public health, and imperialism, and how have these connections changed as resistance to imperialism has grow in the Global South?

The authors are referring to those countries in the Southern hemisphere from Africa, Asia, and Latin America as the Global South. The Global North refers to Europe and North America, and some other industrialized and advanced countries in the Northern hemisphere.

The authors in Part Four focus on the forces and institutions that have imposed a top-down reform of health care in the Global South. Such organizations as the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Gates foundations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, trade agreements such as NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP, TiSA, and health organizations as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) are all termed “philanthrocapitalism” by the authors, and have implemented policies that have weakened public health standards and favored private corporations.

The final part, Part Five focuses on the road ahead, i.e., the contours of change the authors foresee and the concrete actions that can contribute to a progressive transformation of capitalist health care and society.

The authors address these questions:

What examples provide inspiration about resistance to neoliberalism and construction of positive alternative models in the Global South?

Because improvements in health do not necessarily follow from improvements in health care, how do we achieve change in the social and environmental determinants of health?

How does progressive health and mental health reform address the ambiguous role of the state?

What is to be done as Obamacare and its successor or lack of successor under Trump fail in the United States?

Howard Waitzkin and Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar analyze a series of popular struggles that focused on the privatization of health services in El Salvador, water in Bolivia, as well as the ongoing struggle to expand public health services in Mexico. These struggles are activities David and Rebeca participated in during the past decade.

These scenarios demonstrate an image of diminishing tolerance among the world’s people for the imperial public health policies of the Global North and a demand for public health systems grounded in solidarity rather than profit.

In the U.S., the road ahead will involve intensified organizing to achieve the single-payer model of a national health program, one that will provide universal access and control costs by eliminating or reducing administrative waste, profiteering, and corporate control.

Gaffney, Himmelstein, and Woolhandler present the most recent revision of the single-payer proposal developed by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). They analyze the three main ways that the interests of capital have encroached on U.S. health care since the original proposal:

The authors offer a critique of Obamacare, explain and demystify innovations as Accountable Care Organizations, the consolidation and integration of health systems, something yours truly has discussed in earlier posts as they relate to workers’ comp, and the increasing share of costs for patients.

The next two chapters concern overcoming pathological normalcy and confronting the social and environmental determinants of health, respectively. Carl Ratner argues, that mental health under capitalism entails “pathological normalcy.” Day-to-day economic insecurities, violence, and lack of social solidarity generates a kind of false consciousness in which disoriented mental processes become a necessary facet of survival, and emotional health becomes a deviant and marginalized condition.

Such conditions of life as a polluted natural environment, a corrupt political system, an unequal hierarchy of social stratification, an unjust criminal justice system, violent living conditions due to access of guns, dangerous working conditions, and so forth, Ratner dissects as the well-known crises of our age in terms of the pathologies that have become seen as normal conditions of life.

Next, Muntaner and evolutionary biologist Rob Wallace show how social and environmental conditions have become more important determinants of health than access to care. They emphasize struggles that confront social determinants through changes in broad societal polices, analyze some key environmental determinants of health including unsafe water (Flint again), capitalist agribusiness practices, and deforestation in addition to climate change. And they refer to the impact these have on emergent and re-emergent infectious diseases such as Ebola, Zika and yellow fever.

Lastly, Waitzkin and Gaffney try to tackle the question of “what is to be done.” They outline four main priorities for action in the U.S. and other countries affected by the neoliberal, corporatized, and commodified model of health care during the age of Trump:

a sustained, broad-based movement for a single-payer national health program that assures universal access to care and drastically reduces the role of corporations and private profit, 2) an activated labor movement that this time includes a well-organized sub-movement of health professionals such as physicians, whose deteriorated social-class position and proletarianized conditions of medical practice have made them ripe for activism and change, 3) more emphasis on local and regional organizing at the level of communal organizations…and attempted in multiple countries as a central component in the revolutionary process of moving “beyond capital”, and 4) carefully confronting the role of political parties while recognizing the importance of labor or otherwise leftist parties in every country that has constructed a national health program, and understanding that the importance of party building goes far beyond electoral campaigns to more fundamental social transformation.

In their book, the authors try to answer key and previously unresolved questions and to offer some guidance on strategy and political action in the years ahead. They aim to inform future struggles for the transformation of capitalist societies, as well as the progressive reconstruction of health services and public health systems in the post-capitalist world.

Throughout this review, I have attempted to highlight the strengths of the book by touching upon some of the key points in each chapter.

If there is a weakness to the book, it is that despite the impressive credentials of the authors, they like many other authors of left-of-center books, cling to an economic determinism as part of their analysis, which is based on theories that are more than one hundred years old.

As I stated in the beginning of this review, my views have been tempered by examining and incorporating other theories into my consciousness. One theory that is missing here is Spiral Dynamics.

Spiral Dynamics is a bio-psycho-social model of human and social development. It was developed by bringing together the field of developmental psychology with evolutionary psychology and combines them with biology and sociology.

In Spiral Dynamics, biology is concerned with the development of the pathways of the brain as the adult human moves from lower order thinking to higher order thinking. The social aspect is concerned with the organizational structure formed at each stage along the spiral. For example, when an individual or a society is at the Beige vMeme, or Archaic level, their organization structure is survival bands, as seen in the figure below.

At the Purple vMeme, or Mythic level, the organizational structure is tribal, and so on. There is, among the authors of the book, an evolutionary biologist, but it is not clear if he is familiar with this theory and what it can bring into the discussion at hand.

It would not only benefit the authors, but also the readers to acquaint themselves of this valuable theory which would present an even more cogent argument for better health care. As the book concludes with a look at the future of health care after capitalism, knowing the vMemes or levels beyond current levels will enhance the struggle.

As I continue reading the book, I hope to gain greater insight into the problems with privatized, corporatized, free-market capitalist health care. My writings to date in my blog has given me some understanding of the issues, but I hope that the authors will further my understanding.

I believe that anyone who truly wants to see the U.S. follow other Western nations who have created a national health program, whether they are politicians like Bernie Sanders, his supporters, progressives, liberals, and yes, even some conservatives who in light of the numerous attempts to repeal and replace the ACA, have recognized that the only option left is single-payer. Even some business leaders have come out and said so.

I recommend this book to all health care professionals, business persons, labor leaders, politicians, and voters interested in moving beyond capital and realizing truly universal health care and lower costs.

This past Saturday, while waiting for power to be restored in my area due to a pesky lizard’s venture where lizards don’t belong, I was able to use my cell phone to read some posts on LinkedIn.

I came across a discussion by three of the top medical travel personnel answering the question, “Is the term “Medical Tourism” obsolete?”

This discussion thread was begun by Stella Tsartsara, and followed by Ilan Geva and Elizabeth Ziemba, including yours truly, who put his two cents into the conversation.

Since Stella has given me her approval to use her comments, and I suspect that Ilan and Elizabeth would not mind, I am going to quote them verbatim here for the reader to digest. There will be some names that I will leave out, because one, I have not contacted them, and two, they were mentioned in passing by the individual who I am quoting.

Stella I. Tsartsara:

“I see Elizabeth Ziemba talking about carrying capacity of HC systems. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX told me half of the international projects I do have nothing to do with Medical Tourism, XXXXXXXXXXXXXX told me we are dealing with “International Healthcare” anymore, we are passed the term “Medical Tourism ” probably instigated by people traveling to another destination for (cheaper) surgery not covered by their insurance where the “patient” had time to do some sightseeing. But once the demand came to more serious interventions like heart surgery then the only organization needed was a reliable MTF and good research from the patient to guarantee results. Here the “tourism” is at the 4-5th place after doctor, hospital reputation, waiting list time, safety, post- surgery follow up, price and cost reimbursement from insurance.

Now with the Cross Border Healthcare and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) Wikileaks revelation on the globalization of healthcare officially by the states, things take a completely new turn and the fact that we are talking about Medical Tourism is raising some eyebrows. Or at least it should be split from Healthcare delivery.”

“I have no possibility for edit, I rephrase here that XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX told me some time ago that her projects deal with international healthcare mostly which is a healthy sign of evolution in the industry although XXXXXXXXXXX says this word does not exist either, to which of course I agree.

Terms are the beginning of taking the trend seriously by the demand. It’s about shaping policy in the end.”

Ilan Geva:

“Stella, I think that the term Medical Tourism was pushed upon us by an association. The fact is no one, except our circle of Professionals, is using it or cares about it. In the effort to differentiate and stand out, many started to use Medical Travel, Global Healthcare…whatever. Patients don’t really care what you call it, they have a need or a want that requires a solution. Many of them are not looking for the “Tourism “aspect of a medical issue. Have you noticed that even the MTA is not using their name as much as they used to? They are now pushing the GHA brand.

Is that an indicator that medical tourism is dead? Who knows, and frankly, who cares? Globally, there are enough tremors in the healthcare sector, enough to guarantee continued movement of patients from one region to another. Maybe we should start calling it “Medical Voyages”?”

Elizabeth Ziemba:

“Thanks for starting a very interesting conversation, Stella. The term “medical tourism” isn’t dead yet because it is still the top search term in the sector and is heavily used by the media. But the sector itself has outgrown the term. I will be giving a presentation at the IMTJ/World Health Care Congress about this very topic. The sector is changing but it is hard to get away from “medical tourism” when SEO rules. I must admit that the name of my company, Medical Tourism Training, was selected because of its SEO and familiarity to people. Even now, people react to it favorably even though I hate it. Time to look past the label to the substance.”

Stella I. Tsartsara:

“Ilan Geva “medical tourism” is not dead and maybe never dead as there are interventions where tourism plays an important part and here individual consultants have a bigger profit margin. But definitely movement of patients for elective treatment is not and cannot be called this way.

In EU we call it “Cross Border Healthcare” because we established the Institutional parameters for its organization and delivery.

This is what is lacking from an international perspective for the term to have a meaning. By the way trained eyes in institutional development like XXXXXXXXXXX will see immediately that the TiSA is exactly the same (with 2 additions on insurance and compulsory post-surgery monitoring & liability) with the EU Directive 24/11/EC on the Cross Border Healthcare in EU.”

Me:

“I have used “Medical Travel” in my posts, but for the purpose of selecting a category to place them in, or to tag them when I write, I use both “Medical Tourism” and “Medical Travel”.”

Stella I. Tsartsara:

“Elizabeth Ziemba & Richard Krasner, MA, MHA I tend to agree more with Ilan Geva on the matter. However as I said there will always be room for the “tourism” side for hundreds of treatments where tourism plays a very significant part like Medical SPA, cosmetic surgery, diagnostics, dental etc, although still I do believe that it’s not a priority. What Ilan said it’s a revelation for the “association”. Who else would give international care such a limited meaning maybe pushed by its operators back then.

But what is coming ahead e.g. Institutional and Regulative development of international healthcare (among public hospitals as well) has absolutely nothing to do with “tourism”. We have to set things straight if we want to be taken seriously by those who will be in our path in the consultation activities for its future development. Those who were (are still) building the TiSA are not going to look or refer to “medical tourism”.”

Stella I. Tsartsara:

“I also have the impression that something is moving in layers that are not yet visible to us, on the management of this new trend. I believe that actors are organizing themselves differently and as there is not yet a market (it’s still a taboo internationally exactly because it involves also public HC, we in EU have solved this but it’s not the case at global level) and the demand is still hybrid, there is no business development and marketing yet of this new consulting set of skills and delivery. But very soon we are going to see a new type of developers in this perspective catering for the state development of international HC. I have proposed years ago through this group the organization of such Groups combining inevitably many specializations and some do exist already run by big Hospital Groups.”

It would seem there is not clear consensus on what term is appropriate for the activity of leaving one’s home country and travelling to a second country for medical care, no matter what the reason for travel may be.

If, as Stella said, it was for heart surgery, doubtless the patient would not be doing much sightseeing post-operation. Yet, on the other hand, if it was for less invasive, and less stressful surgeries and procedures, and if the patient was cleared by the physician and physically able, then the tourism part would apply.

The revelations by Wikileaks of the negotiations on the TisA is no doubt a concern to the entire industry, whether one calls it medical tourism, medical travel, health tourism, health travel, etc. The result is the same. Knowledge of the existence of such an agreement may forestall that agreement being finalized, if not totally scrapped altogether if the right individuals lead a campaign against it in member countries.

Such was the case with Brexit, and such was the case with the 2016 U.S. elections that Wikileaks had a hand in derailing.

The solution, therefore is a stronger effort on the part of all stakeholders to develop strategies, plans, and standards to regulate the industry and to promote it effectively. Relying on an association we know is unreliable is not going to work. Before TiSA is tossed aside like the TPP, or the Paris Climate Treaty by nationalistic dunderheads, the industry must do more.

In picking a fight with Mexico over the building of a wall on the US/Mexico border, the current illegitimate occupant of the Oval Office is not only threatening the relationship with our nearest neighbor to the South, but with our number two trading partner, as the following stats point out for 2016:

By threatening to slap a 20% import tax on goods from Mexico, including his ties, this so-called businessman, will hurt the very farmers who voted for him, as well as the workers who buy their household goods from Walmart and other low-cost outlets, as many parts or food items are made or grown in Mexico. When I spoke at a medical tourism conference in Reynosa in 2014, we drove along the border area where the maquiladoras are located and saw that one of them makes frozen food that is sold across the border. Want to pay 20% more for that frozen TV dinner?

Then there is all that cerveza and tequila and mescal, not to mention avocados and guacamole that will cost more. Stay very thirsty my friends, because it will cost you more to drink with the most interesting man in the world, and all thanks to the least interesting man in the world.

What then does this mean for cross-border medical care?

If Herr Trump gets his way, not only will Mexican goods get more expensive, but if we get into a trade war, look for costs of medical care south of the border to go up as well, or even slow to a crawl or not at all. There is a hospital being built in Tijuana with the assistance of Scripps Health, and as I’ve written about in the past, the Insurance Company of the West already writes workers’ comp policies to include cross-border healthcare for their insured’s whose employees live in Mexico, but work in California.

Since the passage of NAFTA, trade between the US and Mexico has increased, and the towns along the border have benefitted from it. Back then, the talk of building a NAFTA superhighway was met with strong and fierce resistance (I was living in Texas at the time), but I realized that we already had one. It’s called Interstate 35, and runs from the Canadian border to the Mexican border, as does Interstate 5 on the West Coast.

So before you book that trip to Cancun for your tummy tuck or face lift, check to see if there is a 20% tax imposed on your flight, hotel, food, etc., from either the US or Mexican governments. If so, thank the orange-haired son of an orangutan.

In conversations with a noted ERISA and medical travel expert, I have been making the case that laws and regulations such as ERISA, Stop Loss, and other “barriers” erected decades ago, in order to address specific problems such as tort claims, aggregate claim losses, etc., have the unintended consequence of holding back the globalization of health care, which includes workers’ comp.

I have addressed the legal barriers in comp in my White Paper, and found that there were outdated federal and state laws and regulations, intended to protect consumers, actually increase costs and reduce convenience, restrict public providers from outsourcing certain expensive medical procedures, and that federal laws inhibit collaboration, while state licensing laws prevent certain medical tasks being performed by providers in other countries.

Let me state here that I, in no way, am advocating the removal of these laws and regulations. My chief argument is this: our best minds have split atoms, launched satellites and men into space, discovered cures for diseases plaguing humans for centuries, but to send patients to other countries for medical care is impossible, and not worth pursuing, smacks of cowardice or fear that it actually might save money and provide better care. Do we not have the best minds to figure out how to deal with these “barriers”, or are we too fearful and litiginous a society that we have given up accepting new ideas?

Every industry is being affected by two powerful forces today: globalization and automation. With globalization, jobs, plants and other forms of capital are moving across borders. With automation, jobs that were once held by humans and considered very dangerous, are being done by robots, and soon other jobs will be done by artificial intelligence.

Neither force can be stopped, and how we address the consequences of these forces is what many minds are working on right now. But to say that one industry is going to draw a line in the sand and say, “NO” and stop globalization from happening is either insanity or a deliberate attempt to profit from the maintenance of the status quo that many along the supply chain of medical care services, both within the general health care space and workers’ comp have carved out for themselves.

When I was in college, I studied International Relations, and back then, globalization was a word very few outside of academia ever heard. There was an organization created in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski called the Trilateral Commission. Its purpose was to foster better cooperation between the countries in North America, Western Europe and Japan (the Trilateral countries) and their multinational corporations. In the ensuing decades, the Commission expanded the membership to the rest of the world, and globalization became a household word.

Coincidence? I think not, since the heads of major US, Western European, and Japanese companies were members, and so were many politicians, including a former peanut farmer from Georgia and most of his top administration personnel. Other politicians after him also have been members, from both sides of the political spectrum.

Their chief goal is to allow capital, goods and jobs to cross national borders, or to eliminate them altogether, and I doubt they expected the health care industry to stand in their way. These are men who generally get what they want, and damn the consequences. We see this in the breakup of the European Union, which many of them advocated for years, just like they advocated for NAFTA, CAFTA, the TPP, and other trade deals, and don’t give a fig about the impact they have.

So, it is important to realize that the only real thing preventing medical travel is what unintended consequences have on the growth and development of the industry. This is where the industry needs to focus its attention, not on slick advertising, but on hard work and cooperation to overcome these “barriers”.

I am willing to work with any broker, carrier, or employer interested in saving money on expensive surgeries, and to provide the best care for their injured workers or their client’s employees.

Ask me any questions you may have on how to save money on expensive surgeries under workers’ comp.

I am also looking for a partner who shares my vision of global health care for injured workers.

I am also willing to work with any health care provider, medical tourism facilitator or facility to help you take advantage of a market segment treating workers injured on the job. Workers’ compensation is going through dramatic changes, and may one day be folded into general health care. Injured workers needing surgery for compensable injuries will need to seek alternatives that provide quality medical care at lower cost to their employers. Caribbean and Latin America region preferred.

Transforming Workers’ Comp Blog is now viewed all over the world in over 250 countries and political entities. I have published nearly 300 articles, many of them re-published in newsletters and other blogs.

Quotes

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

– Muhammad Ali

“If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small..”

– Azim Premji

“Those who say your dreams are ridiculous have given up on theirs.”

– Unknown

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragements, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.

– Thomas Carlyle

“As the work is done for the employer, and therefore ultimately for the public, it is a bitter injustice that it should be the wage-worker himself and his wife and children who bear the whole penalty.”

– President Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.

– Theodore Roosevelt, 1908

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”

– John Kenneth Galbraith

“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and women of their right to join the union of their choice.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges… which are employed altogether for their benefit.”

– Andrew Jackson

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong it’s reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

– Abraham Lincoln

“Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”

“Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.”

– Karl Marx

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, NOT on fighting the old, but on BUILDING the NEW.”

– Socrates

“Every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

– Arthur Schopenhauer

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

– Winston Churchill

“No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.”

– Robin Williams

“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.”

– John Stuart Mill

“The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.”

– Woodrow Wilson

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.”

– Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health [care] is the most shocking and inhuman[e]…”